my phone from my evening bag and turned on the torch, trying to work out what was stopping it.
‘You can fix this?’ she whispered.
‘I’m trying.’
‘You must. I can’t go out like this in front of those women.’
Agnes stood inches from me in a tiny bra, her pale flesh giving off warm waves of expensive perfume. I tried to manoeuvre around her, squinting at the zip, but it was impossible. She needed room to take the thing off so I could work on the zip or I couldn’t do it up. I looked at her and shrugged. She looked briefly anguished.
‘I don’t think I can do it in here, Agnes. There’s no room. And I can’t see.’
‘I can’t go out like this. They will say I am whore.’ Her hands flew to her face, despairing.
The oppressive silence outside told me the women were waiting on our next move. Nobody was even pretending to go to the loo. We were stuck. I stood back and shook my head, thinking. And then it came to me.
‘Giant finger,’ I whispered.
Her eyes widened.
I gazed at her steadily, and gave a small nod. She frowned, and then her face cleared.
I opened the cubicle door and stood back. Agnes took a breath, straightened her spine, then strolled out past the two women, like a backstage supermodel, the top of the dress around her waist, her bra two delicate triangles that barely obscured the pale breasts underneath. She stopped in the middle of the room and leant forwards so that I could ease the dress carefully over her head. Then she straightened up, now naked except for her two scraps of lingerie, a study in apparent insouciance. I dared not look at the women’s faces, but as I draped the yellow dress over my arm I heard the dramatic intake of breath, felt the reverberations in the air.
‘Well, I –’ one began.
‘Would you like a sewing kit, ma’am?’ The attendant appeared at my side. She worked the little packet open while Agnes sat daintily on the chaise longue, her long pale legs stretched demurely out to the side.
Two more women walked in, and their conversation stopped abruptly at the sight of the nearly-naked Agnes. One coughed, and they looked studiedly away from her, stumbling over some new conversational platitude. Agnes rested on the chair, apparently blissfully unaware.
The attendant handed me a pin, and using its point I caught the tiny scrap of thread that had entangled itself, tugging gently until I had freed it and the zip moved again. ‘Got it!’
Agnes stood, held the attendant’s proffered hand and stepped elegantly back into the yellow dress, which the two of us raised around her body. When it was in place I pulled the zip smoothly up until she was clad, every inch of the dress flush against her skin. She smoothed it down around her endless legs.
The attendant proffered a can of hairspray. ‘Here,’ she whispered. ‘Allow me.’ She leant forward and gave the fastening a quick spray from the can. ‘That’ll help it stay up.’
I beamed at her.
‘Thank you. So kind of you,’ Agnes said. She pulled a fifty-dollar bill from her evening bag and handed it to the woman. Then she turned to me with a smile. ‘Louisa, darling, shall we go back to our table?’ And, with an imperious nod to the two women, Agnes lifted her chin and walked slowly towards the door.
There was silence. Then the attendant turned to me, and pocketed the money with a wide grin. ‘Now that,’ she said, her voice suddenly audible, ‘is class.’
6
The following morning, George didn’t come. Nobody told me. I sat in the hall in my shorts, bleary and gritty-eyed, and at half seven grasped that he must have been cancelled.
Agnes did not get up until after nine, a fact that had Ilaria tutting disapprovingly at the clock. She had sent a text asking me to cancel the rest of her day’s appointments. Instead, some time around mid-morning, she said she’d like to walk around the Reservoir. It was a breezy day and we walked with scarves pulled up around our chins and our hands thrust into our pockets. All night I had thought about Josh’s face. I still felt unbalanced by it, found myself wondering how many of Will’s doppelgängers were walking around in different countries right now. Josh’s eyebrows were heavier, his eyes a different colour, and obviously his accent wasn’t Will’s. But still.
‘You know what I used to do with my friends when we